Escalation League Help me pick an army?

[thiazi]

My FLGS is starting a Escaltion League and we will be required to purchase new armies for. I am looking for "COOL" suggestions. Winning is nice but i want to create a fun army. The Leage will move from 500-1500 points from start to finish.
So what are some cool themed armies I could run?
I dont mind converting so Skies the limit as long as it can be done in a GW offical (No forge world armies) but counts as is fine. If it is an army that requires heavy coverting please offer suggestions on where to find the needed converting pieces.

I must include:
1 HQ
2 troops
1 fast
1 heavy
1 elite
I can add more of any of the above as long as i keep to normal force org but we are required to purchase one of each during the league.

[waddywoos]

Okay well I can list all the ideas I've had for myself that are in various stages of unfinishedness or not started!

Rastamarines. There's a brilliant photo of a Bob Marley terminator on the unofficial warhammer Facebook group page. This could be done as regular marines, blood angels or dark angels. Personally I'd go with deathwing or ravenwing for lower model count so you can spend more time on each individual.

Imperial fists 1st company with the Lysander model representing Belial with TH/SS with deathwing rules.

A Tyranid army of all gaunts, with tervigons spawning more would be fluffy.

An all foot imperial guard veteran army with sentinels... All modelled as paratroopers. Not the FW elysians, from the Cadians or Kasrkin. This is a massive undertaking though.

A dreadnought themed list with the character that makes them scoring units.

White scars are not widely played, that would be awesome.

A Raven Guard list with assault marines and scouts. With the shadow captain Shrike too.

If you've read the salamander series of books (great read, definitely recommend!) you can build a force around the named characters and vehicles.

Space wolves in general lend themselves well to fluffy but effective lists. Using the sagas for your hero gives you mini objectives and stories to make up for him, and theres some awesome backstory for the units written in the rules section for them. Just don't take three units of long fangs with missile launchers or everyone will hate you!

Chaos book is out in the next few months and there's rumours that they're brininging back the old legions. If you take a fancy to chaos then iron warriors, world eaters, emperors children and thousand sons are a good bet. Night lords look awesome and are quite underplayed too.

Eldar led by Phoenix lords are pretty cool. Or Ulthwe with a seer council and Eldrad. They have an awesome paint scheme, especially for vehicles that is simple to do with masking tape.

Okay that's the end of my train journey... I will see if I think of more later and come back!

[thiazi]

Good suggestions.

Some how white scars had completely escaped me and i have always wanted to build a white scar army. I was also toying with a similar guard list but wasnt sure what would make good paratroopers. Or a thousand sons or death guard list are both list i have wanted to create for a while now. Most of the other stuff i already have although i am not against explanding current armies.

[waddywoos]

Explanding is a very messy business, not recommended ;-)

White scars would be really fun and different. Try getting hold of the ravenwing battle force to save money and get some cool bike bits.